Visited by the Dutch and French, but untouched by a British keel until 1827, the strange, antique land of Western Australia, then inhabited only by Stone Age men, has grown to see a modern state arise around the haunts of the Black Swan. By W. Charnley.
W. Charnley describes how, on their route to the East Indies in the seventeenth century, the Dutch first came into dramatic contact with the mysterious Great South Land that is now Australia.
On April 20th, 1770, writes W. Charnley, Captain James Cook, commissioned to observe the transit of Venus, first watched the shores of Australia rising slowly above the westward horizon.
